A painting shows evidence of insanity?

[FatJackSprat]

The women around the baby carriage are very emotionless, with one standing quietly with her hands folded in front of her. There isn't any happiness over seeing the baby, they're just looking at it as an object.

The men are skiing, the children are building a snowman, and everyone else is riding in the sleighs. They are all disconnected from the baby, which is normally a source of joy that people seem to gravitate towards. I almost feel sad for the baby, as if no one really cares about it.

None of this goes with the clues, but I would guess that the painter has always felt alone and unloved, maybe even that he doesn't have a place in the world and everything just happens around him
.

 

[Chad]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If I'm not mistaken, a lot of that type of psychology has fallen by the wayside... Especially things like rorschache (sp?) tests. It seems only a couple weeks ago when I was reading an article on how ridiculuous those things are (from an empirical point of view). The author of that study/article made a comparison between those and other nonsense such as astrology and palm reading.

Essentially, what it comes down to isn't that the professor/"scholars" *knew* the artist had some sort of mental condition, THEN looked at the painting and said, "ohhhh, I see it now. He painted that the way he did because he has that mental illness."

i'm not sure. not saying anything definitive here, but for example my daughter has an incredible propensity for patterns and repetitiveness. in speech [she can repeat a word for hours] and also in sight [she wants me to draw things such as the sun, a bottle, a tree, sticks, over and over and over again - in fact, i have to stop, she won't] and auditory [for instance, the song Barbie Girl -i know, it's a double whammy for me- is something she has to hear over and over for hours... or nursery rhymes].

my daughters neurologists and doctors still hasn't even completely diagnosed her, and say they don't think anyone can, because she presents with so many different symptoms that "lay over one another" like epilepsy, autism, and about 5 others that one doctor or another says she has.

i also believe i myself had a bout with Schizophrenia when i was 16 and smoked some pot [which can substantially increase your chances for having it onset]. that age is also prime time for it. i've tried pot a couple other times and ended up in the hospital having an acute onset.

 

[Ephemeral]

Originally posted by: Chad

that's really interesting you say that, cause the whole painting kind of looks like a scene in a Christmas globe thingy, which is round/circular [and that hasn't been shook up yet, therefore why it's not "snowing"] and is very sterile and lifeless. it also explains the horses weird leg positions b/c it is a "posed" scene.

very observant of you.

running with this... so could it be he sees the world as if he himself is disconnected from it? almost as a 3rd party. he sees the world as though he's outside looking in (?). kinda like we would view a snow globe, maybe? which ultimately would lead us to some form of Schizophrenia.

The snow globe is an interesting theory, but I don't know that I would consider feeling disconnected and/or being schizophrenic as a rare mental disorder. It does make sense considering the setting of the painting however.

Just to expound more on my initial thought...maybe he doesn't have a fear of being a snowman, but thinks he IS a snowman. Although trying to fathom that is making my brain implode.

 

[Kalmah]

It's a fear of the number 4!! All the houses in the front have 3 windows.. the one on the far right in the back has 4.

And look.. there are 3 horses on each sled..

heheh

 

[sixone]

Originally posted by: Czar
ohhh I get it now, take notice there are three of everything there, three horses, three people on each sleigh not counting the rider, three windows on each floor, three people, three trees in groups. I think its that disorder where you have to count everything you do, you dont do, like you open a door, you have to open it three times. Dont know what its called.

The threes were the first thing I noticed, too. Weird.

 

[platinumike]

I think it is either one of the following:
-Fear of being alone because once you take out everything the place seems lonely
-Fear of being sad and lonely or a fear of being happy and satisfied. No one in the picture knows how to display the correct emotion, So the painter could feel an obsession to make everything look real happy and exciting but he lacks the ability of how to properly display their emotions.

 

[Chad]

Originally posted by: Ephemeral
Just to expound more on my initial thought...maybe he doesn't have a fear of being a snowman, but thinks he IS a snowman. Although trying to fathom that is making my brain implode.

interesting. i say that b/c when the professor was asked if "you was a flaming strawman" he said "a strawman, no, but close". the reason he was asked about a strawman was because of the painting's depiction of the Maslenitsa (Shrovetide, the feast on the last day before the Lent ? the Brazilian carnival is the same holiday). It?s one of the holidays with pagan roots, and the celebration involves burning a strawman ? symbolising, if I remember correctly, the ending winter.

Obviously a snowman is "close" to a strawman; and if you think of the scene as the beginning of the end of winter, that wouldn't be good at all for a snowman.

p.s. Schizophrenia happens in about 1% of the population, on average. that's pretty rare [in overall terms]. and we know it's definitely a serious mental disorder.

 

[Ephemeral]

Originally posted by: Chad

Obviously a snowman is "close" to a strawman; and if you think of the scene for the ending of winter, that wouldn't be good at all for a snowman.

Now I am imagining him always frantically running around in search of a freezer :laugh:.

 

[Chad]

hehe

so if he's a snowman, that would make his phobia what? fear of the sun? heat? impending doom? spring time? there's no sun/sunlight in the painting, that i can see.

 

[Ephemeral]

Well if he does in fact think he is a snowman, and the painting is a depiction of Maslenitsa, then it stands to reason that he would fear the end of winter.

 

[Chad]

and ultimately then, his demise. hmm.. so paranoia?

 

[FilmCamera]

This is absurd. It's a damned painting. How does he know anything about the painter? Does he know the painter personally?

 

[BUrassler]

Aren't the three children on the left side of the picture, between the trees & in front of the yellow house, building a snowman?!

 

[FilmCamera]

The whole 3 of everything doesn't play out. On the left there is a group of 4 trees. On the right a group of 2 trees, a house with 2 windows, another building with 4 windows per story, 2 skiers on the left and right,

 

[theeedude]

Does it have to do with the way the edges of all the buildings line up?

 

[Gunslinger08]

Depersonalization.

 

[FilmCamera]

I think this is a classic case of people overanalyzing something. It's like all the bullshit in my AP Lit class back in high school. Giving you a passage from some book and asking you what the writers feelings were when he wrote it. The writer has been dead for 100 years so who the hell knows? You can't determine someones feelings just by something they wrote in a fictional work. It's absolutely absurd.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If I'm not mistaken, a lot of that type of psychology has fallen by the wayside... Especially things like rorschache (sp?) tests. It seems only a couple weeks ago when I was reading an article on how ridiculuous those things are (from an empirical point of view). The author of that study/article made a comparison between those and other nonsense such as astrology and palm reading.

Essentially, what it comes down to isn't that the professor/"scholars" *knew* the artist had some sort of mental condition, THEN looked at the painting and said, "ohhhh, I see it now. He painted that the way he did because he has that mental illness."

A good double-blind test of this prof's ability to diagnose through looking at paintings would be interesting. Give him a series of paintings by people with various disorders and a few ostensibly sane ones, see how well he scores.

Or give this same painting to a larger group of experts and see if they all reach the same conclusion, all without any knowledge of the painter.

 

[theeedude]

Originally posted by: FilmCamera
I think this is a classic case of people overanalyzing something. It's like all the bullshit in my AP Lit class back in high school. Giving you a passage from some book and asking you what the writers feelings were when he wrote it. The writer has been dead for 100 years so who the hell knows? You can't determine someones feelings just by something they wrote in a fictional work. It's absolutely absurd.

At least she didn't point out all the sexual metaphors like my teacher. That woman had one dirty mind.

 

[Chad]

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2204525&pagenumber=1

 

[SketchMaster]

He is afraid of silence.

 

[BrunoPuntzJones]

He's a bald gay man. Raging homophobe?

As a result being lonely forever...

 

[Chad]

he thinks he's a snowflake, and he fears the kids that are eyeballing him cause they wanna make him into a snowman like the other 3 kids in the distance. also, he fears melting with the onset of spring.

 

[Whisper]

Originally posted by: FilmCamera
I think this is a classic case of people overanalyzing something. It's like all the bullshit in my AP Lit class back in high school. Giving you a passage from some book and asking you what the writers feelings were when he wrote it. The writer has been dead for 100 years so who the hell knows? You can't determine someones feelings just by something they wrote in a fictional work. It's absolutely absurd.

While over-analyzing definitely occurs, I think many people would likely be fairly astonished at just how much nuance goes into some of the great works of literature. Subtle word, scenery, and character choices, among other things, can be simple gestures made to represent very unsimple things.

As for the painting...in my opinion, that seems to be psyhodynamic theory taken a whee bit too far.

 

[Whisper]

Originally posted by: Chad

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If I'm not mistaken, a lot of that type of psychology has fallen by the wayside... Especially things like rorschache (sp?) tests. It seems only a couple weeks ago when I was reading an article on how ridiculuous those things are (from an empirical point of view). The author of that study/article made a comparison between those and other nonsense such as astrology and palm reading.

Essentially, what it comes down to isn't that the professor/"scholars" *knew* the artist had some sort of mental condition, THEN looked at the painting and said, "ohhhh, I see it now. He painted that the way he did because he has that mental illness."

i'm not sure. not saying anything definitive here, but for example my daughter has an incredible propensity for patterns and repetitiveness. in speech [she can repeat a word for hours] and also in sight [she wants me to draw things such as the sun, a bottle, a tree, sticks, over and over and over again - in fact, i have to stop, she won't] and auditory [for instance, the song Barbie Girl -i know, it's a double whammy for me- is something she has to hear over and over for hours... or nursery rhymes].

my daughters neurologists and doctors still hasn't even completely diagnosed her, and say they don't think anyone can, because she presents with so many different symptoms that "lay over one another" like epilepsy, autism, and about 5 others that one doctor or another says she has.

i also believe i myself had a bout with Schizophrenia when i was 16 and smoked some pot [which can substantially increase your chances for having it onset]. that age is also prime time for it. i've tried pot a couple other times and ended up in the hospital having an acute onset.

Schizophrenia, with males, from what I remember, tends to have an onset in the early-20's, although 16 wouldn't be unheard of. However, your situation seems more directly related to a cannabis-induced psychosis than schizophrenia, per se, which is a fairly persistent and debilitating condition. Then again, that's entirely conjecture.

As for the psychiatrist's views on the painting, psychoanalysis has received a great deal of criticism from the "empirical" community as of late. The rorschach, being one of the most widely-used tests in all of psychology/psychiatry, provides just one example of such criticism. The basic argument against the theory as a whole is that it hasn't been very rigorously studied in regards to efficacy and effectiveness, and that in many ways it's infallible (i.e. can't be proven false).

Those subscribing to the theory say that they've personally seen it work, and that its efficacy and effectiveness can't accurately be measured via the methods we use today.